Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) will appear in their first joint media interview on Sunday after accepting their party’s nominations this week.
However, unlike President Trump, Biden and Harris have thus far declined to take questions from the media in an open joint press conference where no questions or topics are off-limits.
In the event that such a press availability arises, here are 45 questions the media should ask them. This list is by no means exhaustive.
QUESTIONS FOR JOE BIDEN:
1. Why did members of your family keep getting lucrative business opportunities overseas while you were vice president?
2. How did your brother, Frank, secure $45,000,000 in taxpayer loans from the Obama administration for his Caribbean projects?
3. How did a newly-minted firm employing your other brother, James, receive a $1.5 billion contract to build homes in Iraq despite having no experience in construction or international development?
4. Why did your son Hunter accompany you on your official trip to Beijing in December 2013? What did he do on that trip? Who did he meet with? What should the American public make of the fact that just 10 days after this trip, your son’s boutique private equity firm secured a $1 billion investment deal from the state-owned bank of China (later expanded to $1.5 billion) despite having no prior experience in China, and with this deal, the Chinese government granted your son’s firm a first-of-its-kind arrangement to operate in the the recently formed Shanghai Free-Trade Zone—a perk not granted to any of the large established financial institutions?
5. Should the American public be concerned that your son’s private equity firm partnered with a Chinese government-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate to facilitate the purchase of an American company that produced strategically sensitive dual-use military technology that the Chinese government wanted?
6. Does your “Build Back Better” proposal contain any provisions to ensure that American taxpayer-funded technology is not bought off by Chinese state-backed enterprises working with private equity firms like your son’s?
7. Back in 2000, you voted in favor of giving permanent Normal Trade Relations (NTR) to China. At the time, you said that this would not lead to “the collapse of the American manufacturing economy” because China is “about the size of the Netherlands” and could not possibly become “our major economic competitor.” Furthermore, you predicted that free trade with China would establish “a path toward ever greater political and economic freedom” for the people of China. Do you still stand by these statements today after 3.4 million American jobs have been lost to China and millions of China’s citizens have been imprisoned, surveilled, disappeared, and used as slave labor by an increasingly authoritarian regime enriched by 20 years of record trade imbalances from flagrant trade violations?
8. The People’s Republic of China has a bold plan called “Made in China 2025” to dominate the key technologies of the future in order to overtake the United States militarily and economically. Do you still contend that China is “not competition for us”?
9. Why did you promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to financial special interest groups when research was clear that the deal would make it easier for corporations to move U.S. jobs overseas?
10. Do you believe Xi Jinping kept his promise to Barack Obama to end cyber-espionage against the United States? If not, what are you prepared to do about it?
11. Do you accept that the coronavirus originated in China? Do you think China was honest with the world in its handling of the coronavirus? Are you satisfied with China’s explanations for how it spread? Do you believe their claims about the number of cases and fatalities in China?
12. Do you think China should be held responsible in any way for its handling of the coronavirus? If not, why not? What, if any, repercussions should there be for China in its handling of the coronavirus?
13. Did you suggest investigating Michael Flynn under the Logan Act, as Peter Strzok’s notes suggest?
14. You said in your DNC acceptance speech that America is ready to “do the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism.” What did you do in your 36 years as a U.S. senator and 8 years as vice president to root out systemic racism? Why didn’t it work?
15. You have called for “revolutionary institutional changes.” What does that mean in practice?
16. You have vowed to rescind the Trump tax cuts. Can you think of a single example of a country that recovered from a recession by raising taxes?
QUESTIONS FOR KAMALA HARRIS:
17. Why did you refuse to prosecute even one sexual abuse case involving the Catholic Church in San Francisco when you were attorney general, despite the pleas of victims’ groups?
18. Also, why did your attorney general’s office refuse to release the documents obtained from the San Francisco archdiocese with all the information about priests accused of sexual abuse? Victims’ rights groups have criticized your office for deliberately burying these documents and thereby covering up the crimes and leaving the public unprotected. Why did you do this? The San Francisco district attorney’s office claimed in 2019 that they no longer have these documents in their possession. What happened to them? How can you claim to be a defender of children when you declined to prosecute the abusers of children?
19. Why did your office decline to investigate the health supplement fraud cases involving companies your husband’s law firm represented? Did you, as California’s attorney general, ever purposefully decline investigating or prosecuting clients of your husband’s law firm?
20. You said you believed the women accusing Joe Biden of inappropriate touching. Do you believe Tara Reade? If not, why not? If so, how do you justify supporting him now?
21. You once attacked a judicial nominee on the basis of his membership in the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus, which is the largest fraternal organization in the world and includes among its past and present members many prominent Americans like President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA), and Vince Lombardi. Do you believe that being a member of the Knights of Columbus disqualifies a person from holding public office? Would you refuse to hire someone on the basis of their membership in the Knights of Columbus or any other Catholic organization? In your questioning of this Catholic judicial nominee, you singled out the issue of the Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life. Would you disqualify a job applicant on the basis of their Catholic beliefs, including their beliefs about abortion? Do you believe that being pro-life disqualifies someone from employment?
22. Why did you single out journalist David Daleiden for prosecution for undercover journalism that others do without penalty?
23. Your chief-of-staff, Karine Jean-Pierre, wrote an op-ed last year attacking the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Americans who associate with it, stating “You cannot call yourself a progressive while continuing to associate yourself with an organization like AIPAC that has often been the antithesis of what it means to be progressive.” Do you believe that pro-Israel activism is incompatible with progressive values?
24. The Biden campaign has adopted a version of the Green New Deal that calls for 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2035. California has adopted similar “green” goals, but now it can’t keep the lights on due to the state’s reliance on wind and solar energy. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newson admitted this week that the Golden State needs a “backup” plan for energy because the current blackouts caused by lack of wind and overcast skies have shown the danger of relying solely on “green” energy. Why would the nation fare any better than sunny breezy California in keeping the lights on if we adopt 100 percent renewable energy?
25. You said in the past that we “need to hold China accountable” for trade violations, but you are against the use of tariffs. How do you intend to hold China accountable? You also said that “we need to export American products, not American jobs.” How do you intend to make sure we don’t export more American jobs to China? How would your policy differ significantly from the same policies that led to the loss of 3.4 million jobs to China?
QUESTIONS FOR BIDEN OR HARRIS:
26. You both supported the George Floyd protests, which you claimed were peaceful. Have you spoken to any victims of the riots — people who lost loved ones or businesses?
27. Do you believe that the looting of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago was a “form of reparations,” as one Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer claimed? Is looting an appropriate form of protest as a means of reparations?
28. Seattle Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a neighborhood last week, demanding that residents “get the f*** out” and “give black people back their homes” as reparations. Do you support that style of protest?
29. If elected, would you object if protesters decided to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square across from the White House? What about statues to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington? Would you be willing to sign a written pledge to protect our national monuments and statues?
30. What is the maximum number of illegal immigrants you would allow into the country before securing the border to stop more from entering?
31. The Obama administration deported an estimated 3 million illegal aliens. Was that a bad thing?
32. With 30 million Americans unemployed due to the coronavirus, would you support a halt on work visas for foreign workers competing with Americans for jobs?
33. Do you still support a ban on fracking? If so, what do you say to the estimated 7.5 million American jobs that will be lost due to such a ban, which includes an estimated 550,000 jobs lost in Pennsylvania, 500,000 jobs lost in Ohio, 363,000 jobs lost in North Carolina, 353,000 jobs lost in Colorado, and 233,000 jobs lost in Michigan?
34. Wall Street has praised the choice of Kamala Harris as VP. Why do you think financial special interests support her so much?
35. Will you be following the advice of your Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors in negotiating with China? If not, whose advice would you seek out in negotiating with China?
36. Do you support China’s actions in Hong Kong?
37. Do you support China’s actions in Xinjiang province where an estimated 3 million predominantly Uyghur Muslims are imprisoned in what the Pentagon has described as “concentration camps”? Are you concerned about the fact that Hunter Biden’s China-backed private equity firm invested heavily in the surveillance technology used to spy on the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province?
38. Do you disagree with how the Trump administration is handling Huawei? Do you think Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou should be extradited to the United States for trial?
39. Do you believe China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of colonialism or is it a good program that Third World nations should sign up for?
40. What are you prepared to do if China invades Taiwan or uses military force to assert its claims in the South China Sea?
41. Do you believe the U.S. should return to the Iran nuclear deal? Would you make further concessions to Iran to secure that? Do you believe the Iranian regime should be allowed to buy weapons again?
42. Are you pleased with the results of the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya?
43. Why did the Islamic State fold up so much more quickly under Trump than the Obama administration predicted?
44. Would you advise Arab nations to follow the UAE’s lead and make peace with Israel, or should they hold out for big concessions to the Palestinians?
45. Should the United States apologize for demanding NATO partners meet their financial commitments? If not, why didn’t the Obama administration ever do that?
Rebecca Mansour is a Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.
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